92 Are Perfumes ! Aphrodisiacs? I I am often asked if perfumes can be considered aphro- disiacs. There is no evidence that they are. But the right perfume is never a mistake in an intimate moment, either. Smelling good is a game. It can be an attraction, or a rejection. Perfume is a strategy to make oneself more appealing, if properly used. Perfume works because fragrances communicate in a strong and powerful language. The first message a fragrance sends is: "I am here". Then it continues: - "I am elegant", or "I am daring", or "I love the outdoors" or "I am sexy", or "The night is my moment". It is not just a cliché that there is more to perfume than meets the nose. Fragrances stimulate a part of the brain which changes moods, transmits aware- ness of love, danger, desire and pleasure. Fragrances can rekindle the past, make you homesick, and bring back memories both happy and sad. Perfume's most important effect is its impact on the memory. Two examples of different fragrances are provided by CALANDRE (opposite page) and LA NUIT (the following page). In French, CALANDRE means the grill of a car. Unexpected? Yes. But can you think of a better symbol to illustrate the mobility of the woman of today? LA NUIT is everything the copy promises. Jokingly I often say that CALANDRE is a "vertical" fragrance while LA NU IT is "horizontal". Crazy? But fun. By the way, both are superb. I Fernando Aleu, M.D. PACO RABANNE PARFUMS 660 Madison Avenue, NY 10021 inches square; $12.50. A young Englishman, Thomas Messel, has de- signed a lacquered octagonal placemat of some sort of composition material. There's an off-white faux-coromandel panel in the center-dour Chinese figures surrounded by Chinese florals (peonies, mums, leaves )-on a black background, and the mat is backed with faux suède; $55. Matching coast- ers are $20 each. (Do people still use coasters that falloff and go plop? Or do they just buy them for gifts?) A tray of lacquered wood in the same general pattern is seventeen by twenty- two inches and costs $360. A china pattern, Golden Thread, is from the workshop of another young English- man, Viscount Linley (referred to by Mr. McIntosh as "one of the work- ing young Royals"), and his partner, Matthew Rice. Six pale-blue butterfly medallions connected by three gold threads decorate the rim. A dinner plate is $55. Of quite a different genre is the American salt glaze from Maine. It has fruit or flowers in old- fashioned colors on a neutral back- ground; $40 for a dinner plate, $16 for a mug. Trouvaille Française has 1925 damask tea cloths, thirty-six inches square, from the Hôtel d'Europe (it says so right in the damask) in Avi- gnon; $25. By appointment only: 737- 6015. Conran's has French napkin rings that are silver-plated, and come in seven geometric shapes. They offer a lot of style for $12.95 each. Its Café dinnerware, trimmed in a small black- and-white checked pattern, runs from $4 for a demitasse and saucer to $14.95 for a coffeepot. Our, and apparently many others', favorite soup plates can be found at Jenny B. Goode, 1194 Lexington Avenue (81st) and 11 East 10th. They are black-and-white enam- elled tin, with the owl and the pussycat in a boat (alas, not pea-green) and the first twelve lines of the Lear poem in the center, and unrelated drawings of animals and figures around the edge. They are a product of the Royal Acad- emy of Art, and are yours for $9.50. For the young, or for anyone buying in quantity, or for the kitchen or a summer house, Fishs Eddy (named af- ter a town in downstate New York), 551 Hudson Street (Perry), is the an- swer to a mother's prayer. It's a small space jammed to the rafters with china and glassware bought from ware- houses, not restaurants or clubs, so the stuff isn't scruffy. How about some dinner plates with HUDSON DAIRY CO. VIE DELIVER FRESH on them in bold black letters? They're $9.50 each. Some Ford dessert plates, off-white with a tasteful gray logo? ($5.95 each.) A sauceboat from The Players? (It's $4.95. ) U.S. Navy coffee cups, to remind you of the wardroom? ($2.50 each.) The North Shore Yacht Club? The Adirondack League Club? Twen- tieth Century Fox? Bernstein's Fish Grotto? Fishs Eddy is your place. It also has some unmarked china. Nine- inch plates, white with dark-blue bor- ders, are $6.95 each. Individual cream pitchers are anywhere from fifty cents to $12. A square Old-Fashioned glass is $3.25, an outsized octagonal glass is $1.95, white porcelain glove molds are $28. There's no store quite like it. ALTHOUGH Tiffany has never .n. been known as the Bon Marché of Fifty-seventh Street, it's worth keeping in mind as a source of glasses costing $14 or less for almost any liquid the heart could desire, and they will all fit in the dishwasher except for the champagne flute. Furthermore, ev- erything is washed before it's shipped, and is packed in that classy robin's- egg-blue box, tied with red or white ribbon. Frank McIntosh sells cone- shaped glasses suitable for vodka or aquavit, or caviar. The top of the cone when reversed becomes a glass and fits in the base, which, when filled with cracked ice, keeps the drink or the caviar cold. Anyone who can afford caviar can afford two of these for each person: one for drink and one for roe; $15. Jugs by Glass-Works, a glass studio in London, are to be found at Barneys and at New Glass/Gallery Nilsson, 138 Wooster Street. They are unique. Some are oval, some are square or hexagonal, some have handles, some don't. They are made of clear glass or sandblasted glass, or a combination of the two, with handles of black, blue, or clear glass. The prices range from $30, for a small oval jug without a handle, to $130, for a one-quart hexagonal pitcher in sandblasted or clear glass, both at Barneys. A square pitcher with a fluted-scroll handle attached to one corner is $95 at New Glass. At Contre- Jour, 190 Columbus Avenue (68th), soap dishes in black or white sandblasted glass in the shape of a racetrack are smart and $14.50 apiece. Hard candies wrapped in cellophane,